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			<h1>Fixed</h1>
			<p>Day 01555: <time>Sunday, 2019 June 09</time></p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/06/09.jpg" alt="A minute late to work, and I&apos;m not even there yet" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="repair">
	<h2>Bike repair</h2>
	<p>
		I couldn&apos;t figure out how to get the gear shift cable to separate from the gear-shifting controls.
		I spent over an hour trying to get the control mechanism apart, until I finally looked up a video.
		The video told me to shift the gear control to the lowest gear, otherwise, the end of the cable wouldn&apos;t be exposed, then just shove the cable further into the mechanism, and it&apos;d come out the other side.
		That didn&apos;t work.
		After thinking a while about what &quot;other side&quot; my bizarre gear-shift mechanism had, I realised it had to be the odd hole I&apos;d pulled a plug out of earlier while trying and failing to figure out how to do this myself.
		However, there was no cable end visible in there.
		I kept messing with the gear-shifting levers back and forth though, and found the cable exposed when the levers were set to the <strong>*highest*</strong> gear.
		This bike is built really strangely, so I guess that backwards setup shouldn&apos;t surprise me.
		The frame&apos;s made of oddly-shaped bard so you can&apos;t attach anything to it that you&apos;d attach to a normal bike, such as a holder for your bike lock, and the kickstand has a bizarre mechanism that functions very unintuitively; until you figure it out, you can&apos;t raise or lower the kickstand, either.
		This is just one more quirk the bike has.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, with that removed, I tried to get the gear-shift cable off of one of my scrap bikes.
		No dice.
		I couldn&apos;t even find the hole the cable was supposed to come out of when shoved in, and shoving it in did no good.
		So I tried another.
		This one was built even more bizarre than the one I&apos;m trying to fix, but I got it apart eventually.
		On this one, you do have to actually tack the mechanism apart.
	</p>
	<p>
		I told myself I&apos;d get to bed when Woodward&apos;s ZIP finished downloading, and around this point, it did.
		So  couple hours after midnight, I hit the hay.
	</p>
	<p>
		Getting back to the bike repair in the morning, I couldn&apos;t get the new cable to go into place.
		It kept sticking, and that sticking caused more fraying, as it shoved some of the twisted wires away from the rest.
		After a while, it&apos;d get so bad that I&apos;d give up, cut off the fray entirely, and start again.
		I couldn&apos;t just keep cutting off the fray though; I&apos;d run out of wire at some point!
		Eventually, it&apos;d go through maybe, but the wire would be too short and my efforts would have been in vain!
		I decided to try to glue the cable&apos;s end so the wires would stop separating.
		I guess I should mention that I tried duct tape even before any fraying occurred, as a pre-emptive measure, but the tape was too thick and wouldn&apos;t go through.
		So anyway, my super glue dried up on me a while back, which I found out when I tried to re-glue my bike lock key, which broke again.
		I&apos;ve been just keeping that in my purse pocket since, which has been a pain.
		The only glue I have left is rubber cement, so I tried that, then coated the outside with fingernail polish for more smoothness and strength.
		Honestly, I didn&apos;t think this was going to work either, and it didn&apos;t.
		After letting it dry, the hole scraped a lot of that off, and it just wouldn&apos;t fit in even with it gone.
		Eventually, with enough trying, the cable frayed again.
		I tried using thread to pull the cable through, but the thread kept tearing.
	</p>
	<p>
		Finally, I got to the point that I was convinced that a single cut more was all it&apos;d take to make the cable too short to use.
		I finally managed to shove the cable through, but two of the wires it was composed of got stuck on the wrong side and the fraying had begun again.
		I figured the cable would hold with only two wires missing, so I clipped them and kept going.
		This time, I&apos;d finally get the cable installed and the bike fixed!
		But no dice.
		When trying to get the cable through the first of the three tubes it needed to run through, the wires got all separated again, and many of them got mangled.
		They all made it out the other end of the tube, but the cable was in such poor shape that it couldn&apos;t even make it into the next tube.
		I could cut off all the bad wires, to make it work, but the remaining cable would be too thin and weak.
		I&apos;d failed.
		I came to the conclusion that I couldn&apos;t use a used gear shift cable.
		Cutting the cable caused a slight flaring-out of the wires, and that flaring-out was causing massive fraying any time the cable had to pass through a tight space.
		I&apos;d need to buy a new cable after all.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;d kept pushing my departure for work back, too.
		I thought that with just a little more time, I&apos;d have it fixed.
		Instead, I&apos;d ruined the replacement cable and still ended up five minutes late to work.
	</p>
	<p>
		After work, I tried getting a cable at a store I knew would be open.
		They carry some bike gear, but not being a bicycle shop, I knew they might not have the particular item I needed.
		I couldn&apos;t find the cable though, and ended up asking an employee for help.
		They found it right away, with seemingly no effort.
		Maybe I was just too frazzled to see it.
		It was in a locked case though, so I needed help to even get to it, and they went for the key.
		While they were gone, I noticed it was made by exactly the one company I don&apos;t like buying bike gear from.
		I don&apos;t like giving that company money, and also, their products tend to be really low quality, so the cable would likely break.
		I felt stupid not taking the cable after having made the employee do all this (even though it <strong>*is*</strong> their job and actually didn&apos;t seem to involve much effort), so I ended up buying the cable anyway.
	</p>
	<p>
		After buying the cable, I opened up the packaging right there in the store to see if the cable would be as cleanly cut as I needed it to be.
		I mean, this was a product from an inferior company, so I couldn&apos;t be sure it was actually made properly.
		Much to my shock, I instead found that both ends of the cable had a metal chunk at the end.
		What the squid?
		Neither end would fit into the little hole, given that even a slightly-frayed cable was too thick.
		Reading the instructions, I found that they&apos;d done this to account for bike that take different end pieces on their cables.
		You pick the end that matches what your bike takes and cut off the other end.
		But cutting was exactly what seemed to be the problem that led to my first replacement cable fraying into an utter mess.
		I&apos;d hoped to make this cable work by not cutting it, but I&apos;d have to cut it before making even a first attempt at threading it through the gear-shifting mechanism.
		I decided to buy better wire cutters, hoping that might help.
		I had a pair Summer gave me, but they were very rusty.
		Maybe the problem wasn&apos;t the cutting of the cable.
		Maybe the problem was using a faulty tool to cut the cable.
	</p>
	<p>
		With the new tool and the new cable, I headed home to attempt the repair.
		the cable actually fed through the mechanism without issue.
		I guess the problem really was the wire cutters.
		I still didn&apos;t have as clean of a cut as I should have had though.
		When I fed the cable through the first tube, one of the wired caught and got mangled.
		I had to cut it off.
		I&apos;d&apos;ve been satisfied with the first cable if only those first two wires had had to go, so losing just a single wire wasn&apos;t an issue.
		The rest of the cable made it through the tube unscathed, and even made it through the two remaining tubes without further issue.
	</p>
	<p>
		Once the cable was fed through correctly, it took a while to get the tension correct.
		I either couldn&apos;t access the highest gear or I couldn&apos;t access the lowest gear.
		I don&apos;t really need the lowest gear per se, but while I had my tools out and was already working on the bike, I might as well get little things like that tuned correctly.
		I used a tip I&apos;d gotten from the video I&apos;d watched while trying to figure out how to even get the cable out of the gear shift mechanism: put the chain a couple gears up from the lowest gear when you secure the cable, so when the chain fall back down to the lowest gear, it&apos;ll take up the slack in the cable.
		It just doesn&apos;t seem to be humanly possible to tighten the cable enough by hand, but the chain-displacement trick works really well.
		Except that my bike&apos;s gear shift stupidly functions in reverse, so I needed to set it a couple gears off from the <strong>*highest*</strong> gear.
		While working with the gear shift and test riding the bike, it occurred to me why the bike was stuck in high gear though and not in low gear.
		I assumed that when the cable snapped, the chain would be stuck on whatever gear it&apos;d last been on.
		I knew I was stuck on a high gear, and was glad about that, but I didn&apos;t realise I was stuck on <strong>*the*</strong> high gear.
		The cable pulls the chain&apos;s shifter away from its natural resting place though, which it tries to get back to because of some sort of spring or something.
		On a normal bike, that&apos;d be the lowest gear.
		I&apos;d be stuck on the lowest gear, because without the cable holding it away from that gear, it&apos;d snap right to it.
		Because my bike is so backwards though, the natural resting place is the <strong>*highest*</strong> gear, and tightening the cable pulls it to the lower gears.
		So when my cable snapped, the bike shifted itself into the highest gear if it wasn&apos;t already there.
		The bizarre construction of the bike actually kept the bike semi-usable until I could get it fixed.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		For breakfast, I had 69 grams of cereal and 223 grams of soy milk.
		I didn&apos;t have time for lunch because I was trying to fix my bike, so I just snacked on Aztec salad and pretzels.
		I also snacked late last night while I was trying to fix it, but was too tired to record that.
		I knew how much I had though, so I know how much is now missing.
		Between today and last night, I had 819 grams of Aztec salad and 379 grams of pretzels.
		For dinner, I had 625 grams of a mix of spaghetti, cashew sauce, and veggie dog slices.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="language">
	<h2>Thoughts on language</h2>
	<p>
		Language is a funny thing.
		Most people think of it as a communication tool, and that&apos;s a fair assessment.
		But that communication isn&apos;t just between separate people.
		It&apos;s also between a person and themself.
		Many of our thoughts are in words, which changes our view of the things around us, and even of ourselves.
		That makes it a lens through which we view the world.
		Language lets us abstract.
		We can keep track of huge numbers using thoughts of words, yet those same numbers as quantities of objects if often far too many to keep track of.
		For example, try laying about twenty similar objects on the table.
		Don&apos;t count them.
		Try to memorise how many there are by what you see.
		Count the objects in your mind later, then come back and count what&apos;s actually on the table.
		Odds are, you got it wrong.
		As an abstract number, you&apos;d remember more likely, but as actual objects, you can&apos;t.
	</p>
	<p>
		We can understand things so much better with language.
		We can learn and we can know things we otherwise would have no comprehension of.
		Could we understand the theory of evolution without words?
		Could we know that air is actually made up of particulate matter like everything else if we couldn&apos;t string together a sentence explaining that?
		As I said, language is a lens through which we see the world.
		In some cases, it acts like a magnifying lens, allowing us to see that which otherwise couldn&apos;t be seen.
	</p>
	<p>
		Back in the old days, people used to paint the sky white in drawings, not blue.
		Do you know why?
		It was because they had no word for that colour!
		There was a time when there were only three named colours: black, white, and red.
		Red was obviously red, but aside from that, colours were separated into light and darkness.
		Anything light was considered white.
		New colour names were added, and with those new names came a better grasp on the concept of such varied colours, but it took quite a while before the idea of blue being a colour was understood.
		So the sky was just painted white.
		Clearly, our language shapes how we view the world.
	</p>
	<p>
		But also like a lens, a language can be broken.
		When you use broken language, it forces you to think broken thoughts.
		That&apos;s why it&apos;s so important to fix your language.
		If your available words don&apos;t fit a concept that needs to be expressed, new words need to be added.
		And when you can&apos;t let go of boxing things into categories they can&apos;t fit into, just because you don&apos;t have a category, you need a word for a new category.
		But perhaps most importantly, some categorisations need not exist.
		If you can&apos;t let go and use a supergroup instead of shoving everything into the irrelevant boxes, even when those boxes are technically correct, you&apos;ve got a problem.
		It may not be a problem with the language at that point, but in your <strong>*use*</strong> of the language.
		There&apos;s no reason to box what doesn&apos;t need to be boxed.
	</p>
</section>
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